Apple’s Accessibility Options Improve Lives

by Juli from Pad Gadget:
Apple is known for having some of the most robust and advanced accessibility options on its iDevices, allowing people with vision, motor, and hearing impairments to have full access to the iPad and the iPhone.
For example, with VoiceOver options people with vision impairments can have everything on the screen read aloud, which lets them access a range of different apps and features on iDevices.

One man, David Woodbridge, uses Apple’s accessibility options with great success. Woodbridge, who has been blind since he was a teenager, owns several different Apple devices, including iPads, iPhones, and MacBooks. Woodbridge was interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald, where he detailed his life with Apple’s products.
VoiceOver is the main feature that allows Woodbridge to use his iDevices to run a successful business and to interact with his wife and children. Here’s what Woodbridge has to say about the feature:

“With VoiceOver I can support not only myself but also my boys and my wife. I press the Home button on the iPhone three times to turn VoiceOver on or off when I need to help them. For example, if my wife gets an SMS when she is driving I can call up VoiceOver on her iPhone to read the message to her and we can reply using Siri, which is one of the great iOS developments, getting better all the time.
Or, say an app on one of the iPads is not working properly. I use VoiceOver to shut the app down from App Switcher, relaunch it and triple-click to hand the iPad back with the app running as good as new.’’

He goes on to describe how he operates his Apple TV with VoiceOver and Apple’s Remote app, and explains that one of his favorite apps is Light Detector, which tells him if all of the lights in the house are off.
There are actually hundreds of apps designed for people with disabilities in the App Store, which is yet another reason why Apple has a leg up on the competition when it comes to accessibility.
Woodbridge is certainly not alone. Just a look at a few of his favorite apps, including the aforementioned Light Detector, Fleksy, a typing assistant, and the Looktel Money Reader, used for identifying money, reveal quite a few positive reviews from other folks with visual impairments.
Even I had the chance to explore Apple’s accessibility options when I had eye surgery two months ago. I couldn’t read my phone or my iPad for several days, but both devices were able to read to me, which was a total lifesaver.
Kudos to Apple for its continued dedication to accessibility – the company rarely gets enough recognition for all that it does to help disabled users – and kudos to Woodbridge, a man who makes the most out of the technology at his fingertips.

Little steps for a rewarding result

from the Hindu by R. Sujatha:

Several years ago, when Sujeet Desai visited the city, he performed exclusively for children with Down syndrome. The children were thrilled and the parents at the programme told me that there was hope, even for their children.

Sujeet’s mother told the audience how her son, who had Down syndrome, had discovered a new world, was independent and travelled around the globe for music performances. Sujeet spoke to the children and remained the star attraction on that day.

Last week, the Down Syndrome Association of Tamil Nadu organised a day-long workshop for 30 government school teachers, who were exposed to training methods of therapists from the United Kingdom. D. Sabitha, principal secretary of school education, inaugurated the workshop, and told the teachers that they would in turn, train their peers and colleagues. The aim is to address the needs of children in mainstream government schools, and those in residential centres.

Chronologically, the child could be a teenager, but may have the IQ of a pre-teen, explained Julie Hughes. Children with Down syndrome must be taught using visual cues, given their low attention span and their problems with hearing. Children often hear only the last syllables of a word and they have difficulty in retaining sound patterns in their memory. Suppose you have to teach the child the word ‘ball’. It would be better to use the word repeatedly in as many sentences as you can. So if you are too quick with the words, the child does not understand it.

Children with Down syndrome are at a higher risk for ear infections and hence have difficulty in hearing, ENT surgeon Mohan Kameswaran says. This leads to speech delays and unlike children without the condition, they are unable to understand verbal cues. “Hearing impairments and octological problems are found in 38 to 78 per cent of children with Down syndrome, compared to 2.5 per cent of other normal children. Such children must undergo audiological screenings at birth, and then every six months for three years,” Dr. Mohan said. However, appropriate evaluation and treatment can have a significant impact on the quality of life of children with Down syndrome, he added.

Down syndrome is a genetic disorder that affects one in 750 children in India, said Rekha Ramachandran of Down Syndrome Association of Tamil Nadu. The only way to ensure that such children are mainstreamed in schools is by training enough resource persons, she added.

When I asked her about Sujeet and his extraordinary achievement, she said independence comes with confidence in communication. In India we are still taking the first tentative steps towards teaching our children with Down syndrome to communicate. When this is achieved, we will have many Sujeets.